Volume 5: Inflation Targeting: Design, Performance, Challenges

Central Banking Series

Edited by Norman Loayza & Raimundo Soto- ISBN 956 7421 10 2

Inflation rates fell markedly around the world during the last decade of twentieth century. This was the result of a profound change in the conduct of monetary policy, clearly driven by the strong, anti-inflationary stance adopted by central banks in industrial and developing countries. The central banks' new attitude toward inflation was largely the result of their newly acquired ability to conduct monetary policy independently, transparently, and credibly. One monetary policy approach that combines these virtues with a pragmatic use of policy instruments is inflation targeting. Following the pioneering example of New Zealand and Chile, countries as diverse as Brazil, England, and Sweden have formally adopted inflation targeting as the defining feature of their monetary policies.
The essays in this volume study inflation targeting as a new guiding framework for monetary policy. They help to define inflation targeting as it is actually implemented, evaluate its effectiveness compared to other monetary approaches both empirically and theoretically, and offer the best designs for putting it into practice. Along with original theoretical and cross-country work, this volume includes case studies on four inflation-targeting countries, namely, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, and Brazil.

Comments

"This is a first-rate collection of papers on inflation targeting in practice written by top experts from central banks and academia. A valuable contribution of this collection is that it demonstrates that inflation targeting can be implemented in the real world of flexible exchange rates and open capital markets by both small and large open economies. It dispels the notion, all too common a few years ago, that inflation targeting is only an option for large economies with histories of low inflation to begin with"

Richard Clarida, Columbia University

"During the last decade several economies have adopted an inflation targeting scheme. This book provides a wide-ranging review of the state of knowledge in this area, including theoretical aspects as well as specific policy issues. The meaning and scope of the inflating targeting strategy are clearly presented. The experience of economies that have adopted this scheme is overviewed comprehensively. For anybody interested in monetary policy issues the reading of this book is a must!"

Francisco Rosende, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

"This book is a most useful collection of empirical and theoretical studies of ten years of inflation targeting, covering design, performance and challenges for both industrialized and emerging market economies. It will be an essential reference for students, researchers, policy-makers and commentators"

Lars E. O. Svensson, Princeton University

Table of Contents

The following documents are in Acrobat format.

Title Author
Inflation Targeting: An Overview (83k) Norman Loayza, Raimundo Soto
Inflation Targets in a Global Context (682k) Gabriel Sterne
Monetary Policy under Flexible Exchange Rates: An Introduction to Inflation Targeting (894k) Pierre-Richard Agénor
A Decade of Inflation Targeting in the World:What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Know? (220k) Frederic Mishkin, Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel
Does Inflation Targeting Make a Difference? (2.174k) Vittorio Corbo, Óscar Landerretche, Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel
Targeting Inflation in an Economy with Staggered Price Setting (243k) Jordi Galí
Alternative Monetary Rules in the Open Economy: A Welfare-Based Approach (3.473k) Eric Parrado, Andrés Velasco
A Critical View of Inflation Targeting: Crises, Limited Sustaintability, and Aggregate Shocks (1.471k) Michael Kumhof
Inflation Targeting and the Liquidity Trap (330k) Bennett McCallum
Inflation Targeting in the Context of IMF-Supported Adjustment Programs (387k) Mario Blejer, Alfredo Leone, Pau Rabanal and Gerd Schwartz
Inflation Targeting and the Inflation Process: Lessons from an Open Economy (820k) Guy Debelle, Jenny Wilkinson
Lessons from Inflation Targeting in New Zealand (1.234k) Aaron Drew
Inflation Targeting in Brazil: Shocks, Backward-Looking Prices and IMF Conditionality (640k) Joel Bogdanski, Paulo Springer de Freitas, Ilan Goldfajn, Alexandre Tombini
A Decade of Inflation Targeting in Chile: Developments, Lessons, and Challenges (1.340k) Felipe Morandé
New Frontiers for Monetary Policy in Chile (332k) Pablo García, Luis Óscar Herrera,  Rodrigo Valdés